The head of the Federal Trade Commission has announced new senior positions in the FTC, including a top post for a former top lawyer with the anti-business Naderite group, Public Citizen, who then migrated to the legal professoriat at Georgetown Law. No practical experience in business? Become a business regulator!

David C. Vladeck, who will serve as Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, has been a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching federal courts, government processes, civil procedure, and First Amendment litigation. He co-directed the Center’s Institute for Public Representation, a clinical law program for civil rights, civil liberties, First Amendment, open government, and regulatory litigation. Vladeck previously spent almost 30 years with Public Citizen Litigation Group, including 10 years as Director. He has argued a number of First Amendment and civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and more than 60 cases before the federal courts of appeal and state courts of last resort.

Needless to say, we think this is really terrific news. David is a tenacious advocate for consumers and is taking up this important post at a time when strong leadership and enforcement on consumer protection issues is sorely needed. Congratulations to David! The full announcement–listing the other five appointees, including the heads of the agency’s antitrust, economics, and policy planning divisions–is posted after the jump.

Great news. New FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz has selected constitutional scholar and consumer advocate David Vladeck to head the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection. David’s been teaching at Georgetown Law for a while and before that was a longtime public interest attorney at Public Citizen. This is great news for consumers who want a fair marketplace and bad news for corporate criminals and those who support lax enforcement of the consumer laws. I will do a longer blog from a real computer. — From the Blackberry, in Baltimore.

“We expect Mr. Vladeck will vigorously pursue, with Chairman Leibowitz’s support, a serious consumer-protection agenda,” Jeff Chester, executive director of the advocacy group Center for Digital Democracy, said in an e-mail and blog post. He cited financial products, privacy, online advertising, and food marketing to children and adolescents as areas that “will now get the intellectual and strategic attention they deserve” at the FTC.

Unfortunately, the various “consumer groups” make no distinction between a “consumer protection” agenda and a “business is nefarious” and “let’s raise costs to the consumers” agenda.

The Center for Progressive Reform has the fullest biography we’ve seen of Professor Vladeck, “one the nation’s foremost public interest litigators.”